Earliest
Memories
Inside
cause mom is here visiting me today and I had seen her car outside –
I am always outside ever so much as I can be in any kind of weather
running into apartment to hug mom grandma feeling overjoyed and
grandma asks, “can you go fetch your grandpa, son, tell him it's
time for dinner” and I say “sure it's never hard to find him.
As
I'm running out of the apartment my mom asks curiously, “why is it
so easy to find him, Honey?”
“Just
have to find a huge group of little girls all gathered together and
he'll be right in the middle telling jokes and doing those magic
tricks like he does with coins” I say.
Both
grandma and mom yell, “wait” and I stop and look questioningly at
them both
“Magic
tricks?” my mom asks incredulously and they both share a glance
that says to me they had never soon granddad's magic tricks before.
Grandma look perplexed and upset about something. I tell them mostly
it's these tricks with coins, “i don't know just ask him to do one
for you?” I suggest. I do sense that something is wrong about
granddad being around a group of little girls just no idea what that
could be? I hear grandma saying, “Dear God Ensel not again” my
mind cannot connect any relationship between these things but I do
feel it that there is something there and when I find granddad not
far surrounded by a group of little girls mostly a few boys around
for the show, I called from a distance, “Dinner's ready!” and he
nodded that he had heard me and ran back to the house after looking
at the little girls dressed in bright dresses, pony tails, granddad
towering over them with a can old fedora hat usually a suit jacket on
with slacks.
I
get back and grandma and mom are not talking about granddad but I can
sense something in the air. I think of granddad that he sits by the
living room window and scratches is head with thick, yellow talons
for fingernails making this horrible sound that was amazingly loud I
learn to shut out effectively things from the environment then at an
early age. He ignores me though in a consistent manner just ignoring
that I exist it was as if to him he decided in his head that I just
did not actually live there. As an adult now, I can well understand
his sentiment on that case but I was a good kid went WAY out of my
way to play along at not actually being there so as to be as seamless
a presence as possible in the apartment where I lived with dying Aunt
Norma as well.
Later
I discovered the concept of proximity abandonment someone being
physically present but not emotionally present in relationship with
us. In a strange way I look back now at it all as if it were a time
of divine protection as I pass through the bellow of the beast here
relatively unscathed heavy emphasis on relatively there like in I
recall once in grasping the full measure of it all thinking, thank
God I wasn't a little girl and wondering of how such a seemingly
random thing ends up making what seems a big difference in my life.
